UNDERNEATH THE ARCHES—New "Crypt" Spaces for Byzantine Art at the Met Museum.

Underneath the Metropolitan Museum's grand central granite staircase, the great brick arches which architect Richard Morris Hunt devised to support the stairs have been opened up. Formerly, they were hidden by exhibition walls in the two corridors which flank the Grand Staircase.

Most of the corridor walls remain, but the newly opened crypt-like spaces add handsome areas for display of Byzantine treasures. Centuries ago, these powerful sculptures, religious objects, and precious artifacts would have been used and displayed in Byzantine buildings with vaults and arches suggested by the Met's once concealed infrastructure. The crypt-spaces also provide easy access under the staircase to both flanking corridors. [An architectural history dividend is the opportunity to study the unhewn, uneven undersides of the stair-step slabs!]

BYZANTINE SPRING—Woven image of Spirit of Spring in Met's new Byzantine galleries.

Some finely wrought objects have been brought here from the Met's Cloisters Museum. Including that impressive silver chalice once said to have held the Blood of Christ from the Cross.

The core of the artworks and artifacts are Byzantine objects spanning the centuries, from 330-1453 AD. In 330, the capital of the Roman Empire was moved from Rome to Constantinople. In 1453, the Ottoman Turks conquered the great Eastern Capital and its territories. As Muslims, they were no lovers of idols and images of any kind. So it is amazing that so much art has survived.

Also on view are artworks from the Bronze and Iron Ages of Northern Europe, as well as art from the Latin West. Some of the latter works are early medieval, so the ensemble looks like a catch-all. Nonetheless, the curatorial effort to highlight Byzantine influences on western religious and secular art is rewarding, if viewers spend some time studying the works and reading the wall-texts.

ARTIST AT THE KEYBOARD—Evaristo Baschenis appears in the Aglilardi Triptych with the musical instruments he loved to paint.

The painter of these images, Evaristo Baschenis [1617-1677], specialized in still-lifes, especially of kitchen-utensils and foods and of musical instruments. Flemish painters could certainly match him in the kitchen and on the dining-table with his high-lighted copper & brass vessels, luscious fruits & plump vegetables, and hand-blown glass.

But he was a true master in rendering old musical instruments on canvas. He devised a system of perspective for his musical portraits, so that lutes and horns looked almost three-dimensional when shown at angles. He was specially skilled in suggesting dust on the instruments. As though they were such precious collectibles that they were not often used to make music. Actually, Baschenis was a musician himself and collected both instruments and scores. He also used old manuscript music in his paintings.

But Baschenis's musical still-lifes are not exclusively silent studies of dusty lutes and viols. He also shows them being played, notably in the Agliardi Triptych, now on display at the Met. In one panel, he is himself playing a spinet in concert with Ottavio Agliardi. Another shows other members of this aristocratic Bergamo family also making music. These three impressive panels are part of the 18 Baschenis paintings in the current exhibition.

They are on loan from public and private collections in Bergamo and Northern Italy. For the press-preview and the opening, officials from Bergamo were on hand to talk about his achievements. As well as to promote the Museum Carrara and other cultural attractions of the city and province.

There is a handsome catalogue which bears the title of the exhibition. Its pictorial documentation—as well as informative essays—put Baschenis in cultural context and indicate influences on his work, such as Caravaggio. Not to overlook his own influence on later painters, even if his commissions were largely North Italian.

An expert on architectural perspective, Baschenis adapted this to the much smaller objects of the kitchen and the music-room. Not only did he have a collection of what are now called "authentic Instruments," some of them were already, in his own time, antique.

When he needed some "silent sitters" for a painting, Baschenis could use the actual instruments. But he also kept a sketch-file of perspective projections of favored lutes and viols. One of these appears in different placements in at least two of the paintings on view. With the dust on it intact!

Impressive as the Bergamo masterpieces are, 18 of them were obviously not enough for a special show. So the Met curators have raided their own stores for authentic instruments, antique scores, and historic objects such as those depicted in the Baschenis canvases. This does in fact give the show more dimension and depth, so it's well worth a visit.

HIGH BRIDGE TO CULLEN CASTLE—Robert Adam's soaring Scottish sketch on loan at the Frick Collection.

The current show of European Master Drawings at the Frick spans five centuries. It is on loan from the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh. Obviously, obtaining five centuries of drawings by Scots artists was not the reason for importing this selection from the Edinburgh treasures. It would be almost impossible to assemble such an exhibition, in any case.

There are, of course, sketches by important Scottish artists on view, but they are mainly of the 18th and 19th centuries. Anyone who has admired the white marble statue of Allan Ramsay on Princes Street, opposite the National Gallery, but wondered who he may have been will find an answer at the Frick. He was one of Scotland's most distinguished painters, and the 1776 red chalk of his wife, Margaret Lindsay, illustrates his special talents.

Anyone who has studied the funerary monument of Robert Adam in Greyfriars Kirkyard in Edinburgh may well want to see his breathtaking sketch of Cullen Castle, with a great arched bridge looming from center to left. Adam, of course, was also famed as an architect, designer, and decorator.

Artists South of the Border are not neglected: Joseph Mallord William Turner's Afterglow on Mount Snowdon and William Blake's haunting scene of Job and the God in the Whirlwind are especially arresting.

STUDY BY SEURAT—European Master-Drawing on loan at Frick from Scots National Gallery.

A Georges Seurat crayon study of a nude youth—prepared for Une Baignade, Asnières—is the logo-image for the show. There is, of course, an attractive catalogue for the exhibition—which will travel to Houston's Museum of Fine Arts.

PARSON ON SKATES—Raeburn's portrait of Scots minister on ice.

Also on loan from the National Gallery—on display in Henry Clay Frick's library—is Raeburn's charming painting of the Scots pastor, the Rev. Robert Walker, skating on a loch. Dressed completely in clerical black, with long frock-coat and knee-breeches, the minister serenely slides along, arms folded, right leg lifted behind him. He could be contemplating next Sunday's sermon. Or Haggis for dinner?

In the season when most New Yorkers are out shopping for holiday gifts—or preparing to return them—there's another highly timely show: "The City Shops: Photographs by Martha Cooper and Fred W. McDarrah." McDarrah's name is well known for his photography for the "Village Voice." From the range of these colorful photos, he knows every nook and cranny of New York City, as does Cooper. The images are organized thematically, with the bold photos of neighborhood shops among the most memorable: literally "Shops of Many Colors." There are also some really eccentric window-displays and signage.

There are some hands-on adjuncts, to help school-kids and others think about the way small-scale commerce is carried on in New York City. Obviously, in many NYC neighborhoods, even small shops are more than just places to buy milk, the "Daily News," or get a haircut. They help create the sense of community. They define their area and its people.

NATTY NATHAN DETROIT—Alvin Colt's design for Broadway star of "Guys & Dolls," on view at Museum of City of New York.

Among the treasures on view are original sketches by set-designer Jo Mielziner and costume-designer Colt. Miss Adelaide's perky "Bushel and a Peck" costume looks brand-new. Real Salvation Army uniforms contrast with the more curvaceous versions worn in the musical.

Broadway columnist Damon Runyon—who celebrated the denizens of Broadway in the Prohibition Era and told their stories in magazine articles—is well represented. Including actual copies of the tales in the weeklies, as well as artifacts of their transformation for stage and screen: Shirley Temple, in "Little Miss Marker."

Ben Shahn's Public Works of Art Project paintings of New York during Prohibition and the Great Depression are also on view, along with other evocations of that lively time in Manhattan and the boroughs.

Rheba Crawford, a charismatic Times Square Salvation Army Lassie, is given her due as the model for the musical's heroine, Sarah Brown.

This attractively mounted exhibition will be on view until June 10, but it's only one element of a fascinating permanent third-floor celebration of New York Theatre over 150 years: "Broadway! The History of the American Theatre." "South Pacific" and the Astor Place Theatre Riot also star!

If you want to cheer yourself up immensely and immediately in the Post-Holiday gloom, rush to the Whitney to see the gaudy, arresting whole-wall artworks of Sol LeWitt. It's a real shame they cannot remain on view longer.

Especially as it took a large crew of lesser artists and crafts-people to do the actual painting of LeWitt's bold semi-geometric designs, from much smaller color-keyed sketches and detailed drawings.

LeWitt is perhaps the first "Conceptualist," and, for him, originating the Concept is the Act of Art. Not working out its details, nor actually rendering it in the often large scale originally conceived.

But he certainly does work out the details, as many plane and solid geometric sketches demonstrate. But, like fellow Conceptualist Jeff Koons, he doesn't have to execute his paintings, nor construct his intriguing sculptures either. Craftsmen can always be hired to do that.

Frankly, I not only enjoy the varied wall paintings immensely, but I also find the geometric sculptures fascinating. The cubed outlines of "Five Towers" provide many fascinating viewpoints and angles from which to admire changing inner perspectives. A massive white checkerboard of variously incomplete cubic structures is even more engrossing. At first glance, there seem to be no repetitions of the forms. Also at second-glance…

Hilton Kramer, the severely conservative art-critic of "The Observer," found much of the new Whitney retrospective boring. As he already knew what to expect from LeWitt's much publicized theories and very public practice—often in big Public Spaces, but never executed by his own hand—Kramer was clearly prepared to be bored.

While I was entirely delighted by the bold contrasts of color on the walls and the dead-white geometrics of the constructions, I was not seeking any hidden meanings or social metaphors. Theme and Variations of an optical trick can be visually—and even imaginatively—rewarding enough.

Kramer's sour assessment of LeWitt's designs for the walls and floors of the Whitney show indicate that he wants artists to create works which are not entirely surfaces: artworks which stimulate the viewer's imagination and suggest much more than they reveal.

That was not to be expected with LeWitt. But then, Kramer knew that before he went to the Whitney.

Chances are, if you go to the Whitney, you not only will not be bored by LeWitt's designs. But you will also want to come back more than once to recharge your batteries with the brash colors and bold lines, as well as to ponder the geometric complexities of his sculptures.